When you tune into the Academy Awards show tonight at 8:30 pm Eastern, please join us as we provide a Scientology watcher’s view on the proceedings.
This is the biggest Oscars night for Scientology in many years, and we have been assured by sources who would know that the show will be watched at the International Base by the church’s “Sea Org” members.
(And as if we’d signed Sea Org contracts ourselves, tonight’s show is apt to feel a billion years long.)
What will Int Base be watching for? The same things we will: John Travolta is a presenter this year, and The Master is up for three very important awards: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.
Can you feel the excitement!?
Check back here at 8:30 pm for the live-blogging to begin, at which time we’ll talk about The Master‘s chances and watch for your insightful comments about what’s happening on stage.
Remember to set your Disqus to “newest” under “discusion” so you can keep up with all the latest action!
6:29 pm
Amy Adams just made the red carpet, looking very glamorous and very un-Mary Sue. Oh, the excitement is building.
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7:00 pm
Susan: I hear a voice…It’s my father’s voice.
Wayne: Listen to the words and repeat them, please.
Susan: He is talking to my mother. The face pressure is hurting. It’s uncomfortable. It keeps going up and down and it hurts.
Wayne: Repeat his words, please.
Susan: “I don’t want to come in you now. Let’s wait.” The pressure is banging my face. Into my face. My mother is there, her voice…
Wayne: What is your mother saying? Please, if you hear her?
Susan: She saying “well get out of there then. I don’t want you in me at all if your not there to come. Get in to come.” She’s mad.
Wayne: Please return to the start of this and recount.
Susan: I wonder what they’re doing?…I hear a squishing sounds and it’s wet. Oh. Oh my.
Wayne: Recount please.
Susan: A faint rhythm…then faster. I hear my fathers voice say, “oh honey…I won’t come in you now. I’m not too sure I like children that well and I have my job to worry about…” And my mother must shove him — a sharper pain here — “THEN I DON’T IN THERE AT ALL, GET OUT…”
Wayne: Return to the beginning and recount again, please…
That’s a scene from Paul Thomas Anderson’s script for The Master that didn’t make it into the movie. It occurs on the boat, when Freddie is being shown around by Peggy Dodd. It’s Anderson’s representation of a session of Dianetics, when a woman is being encouraged to “remember” what she heard as a fetus, while her father’s appendage was apparently pressing against her while her parents were having sex.
There are many examples in the original script of Anderson portraying Scientology in wacky ways that didn’t get into the final film. We’ve written before that it’s important to remember that Anderson researched and wrote his script with a heavy focus on Scientology, but it was several years before he was able to film it. By then, we get the feeling that his passion for a Scientology expose had dissipated a bit, and the film he made became more about the performances that Joaquin Phoenix put into it. (Hoffman’s scenes tended to be a little closer to the original script.)
There’s still a lot about Scientology’s early history in the finished film, and the scene late in the movie showing Freddie touching a wall and describing a window was not only one that most clearly evoked Dianetics, it was not in the original script.
Anyway, some things to think about tonight as we watch events unfold.
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7:24 pm
THE SUPER BOWL FOR WOMEN: AN OBSERVATION FROM OUR FASHION DEPARTMENT
“Wow, they’re really going for metals this year.”
We’re only reporting what we were told.
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7:41 pm
Ah, Nicole. We’ll ask our expert sources: when she appeared on screen, was there a collective hiss from the crowd gathered around a TV at Gilman Hot Springs?
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7:51 pm
This “guess what’s under the cover” routine is really irritating.
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7:54 pm
“I like people who like me” — De Niro, looking absolutely THRILLED to be on the red carpet.
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Daniel Radcliffe just used the word “enthused.” So much for Brits knowing proper English. Ffffft.
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8:01 pm
THE MASTER is offered some appetizers, he says:
MASTER: You can hear a tomato scream when you cut it…this is why I don’t eat tomatoes…
Another fine moment in Anderson’s script that cruelly didn’t get into the film. Imagine the yucks.
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8:30 pm
Here we go! Oh, what a set. Here comes Seth!
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So far these jokes aren’t sucking too bad.
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8:32 pm
His delivery’s pretty good, too.
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8:38 pm
Naomi Watts: Classic reaction. This is so meta. Are their reactions planned?
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8:45 pm
Looks like the server is failing us once again. Please be patient. And hey, Seth can sing!
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8:47 pm
Here we go, Supporting Actor!
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8:48 pm
Will the Oscar go to L. Ron Hubbard?
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8:50 pm
The Master goes 0-1!
The Oscar goes to Christoph Waltz
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8:53 pm
As a consolation, we’re going to look at a Lancaster Dodd speech that Hoffman did not speak in the film, but maybe should have…
MASTER: How are any of us going to get better? More able?
We Must Process The Whole Of Time. This Life and Pre Natal Cellular processing is NOT ENOUGH. We have Lived Many, Many, Many Lives. So anybody that is not processing THE WHOLE OF TIME — is doing a disservice to man and WILL NOT GET BETTER. I cannot put it more simply.
And as for me now: I just need to find the time away from all of my writing to go back down and DO IT so I don’t walk around with the darndest limp everytime I come to town!
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8:56 pm
First shot at John Travolta and Kelly Preston. They look lovely.
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9:00 pm
Another moment from the script we wish we’d seen. In the moment when Dodd goes nuts at his critic who used the word “cult,” Dodd also shouts at a woman who has a persistent cough…
MASTER: SHUT THAT WOMAN UP. YOU WILL STOP COUGHING. THAT GRAVELY PUTRID NOISE, YOU ARE TRYING TO RUIN ME. YOU HAVEN’T BEEN DOING THE WORK. YOU WOULD NOT BE SICK IF YOU DO THE WORK. WE DON’T GET SICK.
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9:11 pm
Life of Pi for visual effects. Nice kitty, nice kitty.
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9:12 pm
Well, you hate to see someone cut off like that. But the special effects guy does need to understand, WE DON’T CARE. Shaddap already.
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9:23 pm
While the show celebrates James Bond, we’ll take a look at another excerpt of The Master’s script that really nails Scientology. We’re having a hard time remembering, but we think a small portion of this might have made it into the film itself. But in the script, the full speech is made by Clark, Lancaster Dodd’s son-in-law…
CLARK: You know…at first there were rumors going around about you…
FREDDIE: What about me…?
CLARK: Well, when you first were found on board. People were saying you were looking for Split Saber. That you were trying to steal The Split Saber if it was on board.
…it’s what started all this. Back then…in 1941, Master..he’d been in operation, in army hospital. He died on the table…gone for seven minutes…but came back:
And in a storm of vision and creative output from this experience he wrote The Split Saber aka The Darkest Cloud.
Whoever read it…either went insane or committed suicide. Twelve people read it.
Six dead, four disappeared. The last time anyone saw it…was his last publisher in New York. Master walked into the office to find out what the reaction was, the publisher called for the reader, the reader came in with the manuscript…threw It on the table…and flung himself out of the skyscraper window….
Master took the book and hid it wher no one could get to it…it’s inside this book: all the history. All the facts. All too dangerous. He re-wrote it, using what he could as the basis for what we are able to accept and learn today…that’s Book One that we all study and know…but the real stuff. The things at the center…are still too dangerous. They (kill/cure) any man who reads it. It’s passing through the jaws of resistance. It’s the truth about all this. The book is protected and hidden. No one knows where but Master.
FREDDIE: The truth about all what?
CLARK: Life on this planet.
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9:26 pm
Wow. Shirley Bassey. We remember reading somewhere that the original vinyl soundtrack album for Goldfinger is some kind of totem for audiophiles. Some kind of accident of perfection makes it one of the very best records for testing the dynamics of a great audio system. Have you heard this too?
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9:27 pm
Wow. We’re having a hard time remembering a musical moment that good on the Oscars in many years.
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9:32 pm
Doesn’t the director of the show get a credit at the end? Why does he need to be praised by name halfway through the show?
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9:43 pm
Another great speech from the script, parts of which did make it into the film. Lancaster Dodd and Freddie are in jail together, and Dodd is trying to calm Freddie down…
MASTER: This is FBI work, Russians maybe…this…too much work for the AMA…
FREDDIE: Stop talking…
MASTER: Your fear of capture and imprisonment is an implant from millions of years ago. An Invader Force played games with your spirit as it moved from one body to the next — free for a moment — it was free and the invader force captured it — spun you around in a device not unlike a grinder and hit you with waves of high wattage electrical impulses — quaver bolts to damage you. The impulse lodges and plants the push-pull instinct, dumped in scalding hot water, then freezing cold — a control mechanism — any legal action, a summons to court, the sight of a police officer, exposes a glandular reaction and anxiety wave of the highest order, triggered — the mere threat of arrest will make a psychotic breakdown. This happened to you and you are free to stop it. Their game and implants are no match for you. Laugh in their face. Laugh at it. These triggers are useless now. You created THEM so YOU can DESTROY THEM.
FREDDIE: Horseshit.
MASTER: I don’t have any opinions. I’m giving you facts.
FREDDIE: Just shut-your-mouth? You’re a fucking DRUNK.
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9:44 pm
Sugar Man! Yes!
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9:45 pm
Way to go, Simon.
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9:52 pm
Travolta!
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9:54 pm
Looking good. He’s got the long wig on.
Introducing music musicals. Struggling a little on some of these names…
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9:54 pm
Is that it? Wow, he was wasted if that’s all there was.
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9:56 pm
That seemed to be Travolta doing little more than reading his resume. Downright strange.
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9:59 pm
Check out what Lush put in the comments. Twitter was BRUTAL when Travolta appeared!
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10:00 pm
This just in from Paulette Cooper:
“When you look at John Revolting’s new facelift, you know why they call it PLASTIC surgery.”
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10:15 pm
“We have a tie”
We don’t think we’ve ever heard those words at an Oscar broadcast before. Are we wrong about that?
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10:20 pm
Supporting Actress!
Let’s see how Mary Sue fares!
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10:20 pm
The Master goes 0-2!
The Oscar goes to Anne Hathaway!
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10:27 pm
Thanks to those who looked up the last tie for an Oscar, which was the 1968 awards, when Barbra Streisand tied with Katherine Hepburn.
But we are correct. WE have never heard the words “It’s a tie” while watching the Oscars. We weren’t watching them in 1969.
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10:28 pm
Checking Twitter. Whoa, there’s a lot of Anne Hathaway hate out there.
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10:31 pm
Who are they kidding. The film industry is designed to chew up and destroy kids like this.
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10:39 pm
Adele does Bond. Well, it feels like a Bond song. We actually really liked the Casino Royale theme.
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10:44 pm
Nicole: “The course of true love is far from certain…”
Take that, Tom!
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10:49 pm
Jeez, Kristen Stewart is wearing a cast. Give her a break, people.
Though, yes, she could have run a comb through her hair.
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10:52 pm
Clam Alert: Will Smith!
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10:57 pm
The Death Roll! Always a highlight.
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10:59 pm
Tony, why’d you jump off a bridge, man?
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11:01 pm
Barbra. Like butter.
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11:02 pm
How many remember she played a Commie campus organizer in this movie? Actually, we have to admit we love this film.
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11:03 pm
Lots of executives and marketers on this memorial list this year. Was there a shortage of actors biting it in 2012? Where was Hagman?
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11:08 pm
Chicago was an overrated Best Picture Win 10 years ago, and it gets celebrated TWICE tonight? Why???
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11:13 pm
Also left out of the memorial for executives and marketers: Alex Karras, Andy Griffith, Gore Vidal, Richard Dawson!
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11:15 pm
How do you leave out a clip of Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd? One of the greatest performances ever!
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11:17 pm
I have never seen so many “executives” celebrated in the memorial roll. What a joke. A travesty to leave off some of those names.
But hey, Adele.
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11:18 pm
Well, they have 12 minutes to give out all the main awards. We don’t think they’re going to make it.
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11:28 pm
Another server hiccup. Sorry about that. We totally missed the writer categories. And Tarantino gave the only good speech tonight.
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11:30 pm
This just in from Jonny Jacobsen…
“Finally finding time to tune in towards the end of a quiet night shift — but I still have to put up with the fatuous French commentary. It likes having someone going la-la-la-la in your ear when you’re trying to listen to someone else. Vos gueules, les gars!
A pity Seymour Hoffman didn’t win, but I must admit I liked Waltz’s turn in Django. He and DiCaprio made Foxx look pretty second-rate — but then they did get the best lines.”
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11:34 pm
Director…
Ang Lee.
Wow, Lincoln is kind of getting shut out tonight, isn’t it?
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11:35 pm
As DC pointed out, the producers of the show put on their old movie Chicago twice tonight, but also, they took bows before the show even started. We can’t remember the Award’s producers doing that.
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11:43 pm
Best Actress…
Jennifer Lawrence
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11:45 pm
OK, here we go for Best ACtor.
Does Joaquin have a chance?
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11:48 pm
The Master shut out at 0-3!
The Oscar goes to… Daniel Day Lewis!
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11:52 pm
JACK! We’ll never forget what he said for winning for Terms of Endearment:
“For all you rockers from the Roxie to the Rockies, rock on!”
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11:54 pm
Michelle Obama wasn’t really necessary to hammer home the point that Hollywood is a Democratic town. But what the heck! Nice dress.
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11:55 pm
Best Picture…
Michelle gets to announce the winner…
Argo
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11:59 pm
Ben, you’re giving the epitome of a lousy Oscar speech. Get off already.
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11:59 pm
This is becoming a disaster.
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12:01 am
Seth did fine. The self-indulgence by the producers was extremely annoying (showing themselves, celebrating Chicago twice). The memorial roll was a disgrace. And now it’s over, but it’s still going. What the hell?
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12:03 am
As for Scientology, Travolta really didn’t rehabilitate himself with his wooden appearance. The Master got shut out, but still picked up some publicity that should help the DVD debut next week.
As for best approximation of an OT VIII graduation, that easily goes to the gibberish coming from Ben Affleck.
And this thing is still going? Ah, enough.
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12:07 am
We have some very intriguing stories lined up for this week. We’ll see you tomorrow morning at 7 am with a fun little mystery to start things off.
